


[Fandom Stats] F/F stats (February 2021)

by toastystats (destinationtoast)



Series: Femslash Stats [5]
Category: Fandom - Fandom
Genre: F/F, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Femslash, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 07:35:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29747142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinationtoast/pseuds/toastystats
Summary: Stats about F/F on AO3, including large F/F ships and fandoms with lots of F/F.
Series: Femslash Stats [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1398739
Comments: 43
Kudos: 220





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Related works of potential interest/useful for comparison: [AO3 in 2020](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27315784) and [Biggest fandoms, ships, and characters on AO3 (2021)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29249172)
> 
> These images are also available as [slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1yZbHkSJ0riQNiRLmy511_fkkVudjtG4YyFVo0z89ejg/edit?usp=sharing). The raw data is available in a [spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tqVbkDPmOLOv7O58iEDsG6MpyidfPtgp7ysDxgNJ_C4/edit#gid=444508831).
> 
> I spent a while this year debugging and improving my scraping scripts, and I think there should be fewer errors than in past years, and hopefully no missing fandoms of ships. But if you see anything missing or wonky, please comment and let me know! Thanks.
> 
> I listened to the recent [Fansplaining episode about Writing Women](https://www.fansplaining.com/episodes/144-writing-women) (featuring writer breathedout) while working on these stats -- I highly recommend giving it a listen if you're interested in F/F fanworks and writing about female characters!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **EDIT:** Thanks to eagle-eyed readers who spotted a few missing ships, and to folks who left other constructive feedback! I've now added a Chapter 2 that includes updated ship graphs (with a few new ships), and some new analyses.

[](https://photos.app.goo.gl/b8PJom7GiTirVSBd6)

First, a few stats about F/F on AO3 overall... 

[](https://photos.app.goo.gl/Sr5YR8RnwmVVn1rq7)

In past years I've inadvertently exaggerated the recent increase in F/F by including multi-chapter works that were recently updated as recent works (this causes a temporary inflation because many of those multi-chapter works will be updated again at a later date, and they may end up getting finished in a different year than I've counted them here). This time around, I'm separating out the single- and multi-chapter works, so that the single-chapter work count isn't affected by the temporary surge of recently updated longer works. 

Even in single-chapter works, though, we can still see a recent major surge in production of F/F works! Is that because F/F in particular is getting more popular to write, or because AO3 in general has been more active than usual lately? We can factor out the overall increase in activity on AO3 by looking at the percentage of AO3 fanworks that are F/F, and see if that removes the surge: 

[](https://photos.app.goo.gl/2AXfCmTpJKa1trig9)

The proportion of AO3 that is F/F has also increased over time, but we no longer see a big jump in the recent couple years (for single chapter works). That indicates that the jump in F/F production on the previous graph reflects patterns on AO3 more broadly, rather than something special about F/F. For more data and discussion about the overall increased AO3 activity levels in the past couple years, please see my stats on [AO3 in 2020](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27315784). 

This graph shows a sizable increase in the proportion of AO3 that is F/F between 2013-2015. I'd love to hear theories about why. It probably wasn't just one or two fandoms; e.g., Supergirl started toward the end of that time frame, and presumably isn't big enough to cause that change all on its own. Anyone know what else may have contributed? Was there a mass migration of F/F from other platforms, for instance? 

It’s also interesting to me that multi-chapter works are more likely to be F/F than single-chapter works! I’m looking into long F/F fanworks more for follow up analyses. For now, I'll note that in some of those cases, the F/F ship is a background ship for an M/M or F/M primary ship -- longer works seem to be more likely to add background ships. I hope to have more stats & insights soon. 

Okay, so let's get to specific fandoms! Here are the fandoms with the greatest sheer number of F/F fanworks (though note that for many of these fandoms, F/F is not the biggest category): 

[](https://photos.app.goo.gl/4QRHd7XjYbzPzMhB9)

[Longer list of 785 fandoms with 100+ F/F works](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tqVbkDPmOLOv7O58iEDsG6MpyidfPtgp7ysDxgNJ_C4/edit#gid=632885369)

For the first time, a primarily F/F fandom tops the list! Supergirl has beat out even mega-fandom MCU in terms of sheer numbers of F/F works. Other primarily F/F fandoms like RWBY also rank high. However, many of these fandoms are mostly not F/F; I've shown in gray all of the non-F/F works in the fandom so you can see which fandoms mostly consist of other categories (and see the large degree of variation). We’ll weed out the fandoms that are mostly not F/F in a minute. 

First, a few methodological notes: 

  * For this and the following fandom analyses, I removed fandom tags that are most often used as meta-tags rather than actually appearing on stories (many of the tags removed were broad tags like “Real Person Fiction”). For the remaining fandom tags, the top fandom listed in the Sort & Filter sidebar is the same as the fandom tag itself. E.g., “Marvel” is missing because its top fandom tag is “Marvel Cinematic Universe.” But “Star Wars - All Media Types” remains because it gets used a lot, and so its top fandom tag is “Star Wars - All Media Types.” 
  * Here and in the other analyses, I’ve shortened some long tag names where needed to make them fit. 
  * I left Original Work in the list partly just to highlight that there’s lots of original F/F out there if that sounds like your jam. Also because I’m interested that Original Work contains more F/F (and less M/M) than AO3 on average… I’m hoping to do some follow up analyses & discussion about that soon. 



[](https://photos.app.goo.gl/r6evhysvtoRaCLzEA)

[Longer list of 204 fandoms with 100+ F/F fanworks where F/F is the biggest category](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tqVbkDPmOLOv7O58iEDsG6MpyidfPtgp7ysDxgNJ_C4/edit#gid=444508831)

This list is more helpful for fans who are seeking out primarily F/F fandoms than the previous one was. 

Compared to my [previous F/F stats](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19311247), we can see lot of K-pop fandoms, and also more Japanese media. That matches general trends on AO3 across all relationship categories. However, interestingly, there aren’t any Chinese media/RPF fandoms here, despite a recent large increase in Chinese works on AO3. 

I’m also interested to see that RuPaul’s Drag Race (US) RPF is in here; I’ve never watched the show, but I guess I hadn’t imagined that drag performers would necessarily get tagged F/F in RPF. Would love to hear from folks who are in that fandom if they want to share info/thoughts on the fandom norms. 

[](https://photos.app.goo.gl/CvTWX4beNzdGMTjNA)

[Longer list of 258 fandoms with 100+ F/F works, sorted by % F/F](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tqVbkDPmOLOv7O58iEDsG6MpyidfPtgp7ysDxgNJ_C4/edit#gid=1831326709)

I also wanted to help find the fandoms where you really don’t have to work hard to find the F/F, because almost every work is F/F! :) 

Note that this list would vary a lot depending on where i set the threshold for fandom size. Here I arbitrarily set the minimum number of fanworks to be 100. 

Now let's look specifically at F/F ships... **(EDIT: please also see the next chapter for some updates/corrections!** ) 

[](https://photos.app.goo.gl/8DjvA5bJoUfkMdnV7)

[Longer list of 73 ships that have 1000+ fanworks and are primarily tagged F/F](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tqVbkDPmOLOv7O58iEDsG6MpyidfPtgp7ysDxgNJ_C4/edit#gid=1544597946)

†Note that some of the F/F+ ships here and on the next few slides may contain nonbinary characters; all I can guarantee is that F/F is the main relationship category for the ship. I even had to remove some ships containing men that were mostly background ships for F/F works (e.g., Bow/Glimmer), but I may have missed some -- please let me know about any errors in the comments. 

I didn’t weed out platonic relationships, as I figured female-focused relationships of all types might be of interest to some readers. 

Some of these F/F ships may often occur as background ships on works that have M/M or F/F foreground ships. To remove most of those, I also created a list of big F/F ships from primarily F/F fandoms: 

[](https://photos.app.goo.gl/VWkYT4SDCJjs58me7)

[Longer list of 42 ships that are mostly tagged F/F, have 1000+ works, and are in a primarily F/F fandom](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tqVbkDPmOLOv7O58iEDsG6MpyidfPtgp7ysDxgNJ_C4/edit#gid=1352070641)

These ships are less likely to just be a background ship for an M/M or F/M ship than those in the previous list -- because for these ships there isn't some juggernaut M/M or F/M ship in the same fandom. 

[](https://photos.app.goo.gl/VbjZbGTxCFeB7H9V6)

[Longer list of 71 F/F ships with 1000+ fanworks ranked by explicitness](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tqVbkDPmOLOv7O58iEDsG6MpyidfPtgp7ysDxgNJ_C4/edit#gid=1023475076)

Here are some good ships to seek out if you're looking for a lot of explicit F/F content. (Though note that in this analysis I did not filter out M/M or F/M, so some of the fanworks may actually have non-F/F foreground ships that are explicit.) Note that this list would vary a lot depending on where I set the threshold for ship size. Here I arbitrarily set the minimum number of total fanworks for each ship to be 1000. 

For comparison, it looks like many of the big M/M ships (and some of the big F/M ships) tend to average more explicit than these big F/F ships: 
    
    
    SHIP					FANDOM		% EXPLICIT
    Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester		Supernatural	44.2%
    Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren			Star Wars	38.0%
    Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren			Star Wars	36.5%
    Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter		Hannibal	35.4%
    Bakugou Katsuki/Midoriya Izuku		BNHA		27.6%
    Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter		Harry Potter	23.6%
    Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy		Harry Potter	22.9%
    James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers	MCU		22.5%
    Castiel/Dean Winchester			Supernatural	21.6%
    Jeon Jungkook/Kim Taehyung | V		BTS		21.6%
    Sherlock Holmes/John Watson		Sherlock	21.5%
    Poe Dameron/Finn			Star Wars	17.8%
    Steve Rogers/Tony Stark			MCU		17.5%
    Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov		MCU		12.8%

Note that the above is a hand-picked set of some big ships I was curious about from some of the biggest fandoms; hopefully I’ll have time soon to do a more systematic analysis of the differences in explicitness by character gender. 

In the past, I've ended with some F/F/F+ ships. Unfortunately, those are very hard to gather, and I haven't finished debugging my scripts yet, so I'm not including those this time around. And if you compare this analysis to my past F/F analyses, you'll also spot some other stats missing, like the most active F/F fandoms in the past year, or which fandoms have the most F/F on Fanfiction.net. Please feel free to let me know if you particularly miss seeing any of those analyses -- or if there are others you would like to see! It'll be good to know what to prioritize for next time around. :)


	2. New and updated lists of F/F ships

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following some feedback on Chapter 1 and some new analyses, I have now updated the list of top F/F ships. And I've added new graphs: top foreground F/F ships and most active F/F ships from the past year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can see these graphs in [slide form](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1yZbHkSJ0riQNiRLmy511_fkkVudjtG4YyFVo0z89ejg/edit#slide=id.gc2e43267ef_0_4). The updated data is [here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Rgm7Y8fM-rYI7wrrh4G-8Ss9ivcjHqT-TZrxwje99es/edit#gid=1298403583).

Thanks to eagle-eyed readers on AO3 and Tumblr for spotting some missing ships in the previous chapter! It turns out I was accidentally leaving out ships that weren't among the top 10 ships within their fandoms. That meant that a number of F/F ships from bigger fandoms like MCU, BNHA, and Harry Potter were missing. I've remedied that now. And I've also included ships with 500+ works this time around (instead of 1000+ works only) -- though some may still be missing; please let me know if you spot more.

I'll start with an updated list of biggest F/F ships -- in particular, this includes some ships from big fandoms like BNHA that were missing before (because of the previously mentioned issue with accidentally not capturing ships that weren't in the top 10 for the fandom). Also, based on reader response to the previous chapter, I've removed the platonic versions of ships -- I excluded "Character & Character" tags, leaving only "Character/Character." (If anyone is a fan of the platonic ship tags and is bummed about this change, please LMK.) 

[](https://photos.app.goo.gl/WccgxMX7RYzyMP7VA)

†Please note that -- as in the previous chapter -- some of the characters in my analyses may identify as nonbinary or other gender variants. I am basing these lists on the fact that these ships are usually tagged F/F on AO3. 

[Longer list of 175 F/F works with 500+ works](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Rgm7Y8fM-rYI7wrrh4G-8Ss9ivcjHqT-TZrxwje99es/edit#gid=1298403583) (some may still be missing, especially on the smaller end of the list -- if you spot F/F ships with 750+ works missing, though, please LMK!) 

Some readers of the previous chapter also expressed a strong preference for seeing the number of F/F works with M/M and F/M excluded (instead of seeing a list of F/F ships just from primarily F/F fandoms, which some readers noted excluded important F/F ships). So I scraped those numbers: 

[](https://photos.app.goo.gl/1Qobn1edmfnJ1v2k6)

[Longer list showing these stats for 175 F/F ships](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Rgm7Y8fM-rYI7wrrh4G-8Ss9ivcjHqT-TZrxwje99es/edit#gid=962702527)

I also found a bunch of the most active foreground F/F ships from the past year! These ships all have 500+ works overall and have hundreds of new F/F-only works that were new/updated between Feb 2020-Feb 2021: 

[](https://photos.app.goo.gl/hsLFUiBSLn7wXgFXA)

[Longer list showing these stats for 175 F/F ships](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Rgm7Y8fM-rYI7wrrh4G-8Ss9ivcjHqT-TZrxwje99es/edit#gid=335590973)

I'm suprised and delighted to see the longevity of some older femslash ships like Mirandy, which are apparently still producing lots of new works! (Does anyone know if there was a mass migration of older works to AO3 during the past year, or if these are legit recent works? Very cool, either way.) 

And here are ships with 500+ works and a high percent of foreground F/F works: 

[](https://photos.app.goo.gl/krZJcAS9612xbic49)

[Longer list showing these stats for 175 F/F ships](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Rgm7Y8fM-rYI7wrrh4G-8Ss9ivcjHqT-TZrxwje99es/edit#gid=817321936)

Hope y'all enjoy! And thanks again to everyone who gave feedback on the previous chapter -- including a bunch of excellent comments I haven't had a chance to respond to yet. <3

**Author's Note:**

> A note about The Discourse and comments: Every time I post about F/F, some readers are sad or angry about the dearth of F/F compared to M/M on AO3. That's understandable. (I strongly sympathize with wanting more F/F to exist, and the relative difficulty of finding foreground F/F fanworks is part of why [I keep doing F/F stats.](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1398739)) But I'm unlikely to engage with brief/simplistic comments about the topic (e.g., "It's because fandom hates women"), because from everything I can tell, the underlying reasons are actually complex and multifaceted. 
> 
> I've written a bunch about why there might be different amounts of F/F vs. M/M in the past (as have many others). You can also check out [Gender Representation in Movies vs. Movie Fanworks](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14176743/chapters/34209423) for one of my deepest dives into some relevant data, if you are interested -- though that data only addresses part of the story.


End file.
